


Work Song

by sybil



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:36:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8225486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybil/pseuds/sybil
Summary: It starts out as two blades on a battlefield, a dance they know all the steps to.
[ Absolutely terrible at summaries - just a few passing glances at Cassandra 'Disgusted Noise' Pentaghast and Khalon Adaar. My first foray into the world of Dragon Age fanfiction and would love a beta-reader to hit me with a rolled up newspaper over my flagrant abuse of tenses. ]





	1. Face The Burning Heat

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by 'Work Song' by Hozier.

The first time they meet he is a prisoner, shackled to the floor with the strongest steel they could find and even then there were doubts as to its ability to hold a creature his size. It had taken a team of soldiers and an old plough horse to get him down the side of the mountain upon his reentry into Thedas. What would it take to hold him there?

If he had been capable of breaking the manacles when he finally stirred into consciousness he did not attempt it, unnerving gold eyes fixed upon her instead. Seeing him now as he was, fully himself and no longer tenuously clinging to life, she understood why the pilgrims and refugees alike used words like  _ monster  _ and  _ demon  _ to describe him. 

Breaching seven feet tall, it was as if he had been carved from a block of onyx. Jet hair gathered in a disheveled braid, spectacular if not terrifying horns reminiscent of a dragon’s curling up and back behind his head. In the face of her grief-stricken rage he does not flinch, does not babble and beg as others had been wont to do before him. All he does is watch as if he has experience with the fire that burns high and bright in her heart and knows well enough that eventually the fire will burn itself out.

_ If not him then who must I blame for this?  _ She remembers the desperate thought, unwilling to believe that she must stand alone in failure. Why had her life not been burned from her as it had from those she cared for?

 

* * *

 

Death marches on ahead of them, unhindered and apathetic in who falls and who triumphs as the green maw of destruction opens its jaws wider above their heads. The strange mark on his hand pulses and grows larger with every checkpoint they pass and yet the only hint as to whether it is painful or not is the deepening scowl etching itself into his swarthy features. 

“I would know your name.” With a voice nearly lost to the howling wind she keeps him in front of her, hand resting on the hilt of her sword. He had come willingly, near silent as they make the arduous trek to the Temple where hope might have spawned had it not been consumed in a column of fire.

“Why?” He stops and turns so suddenly that Cassandra draws back, nostrils flaring as if expecting an assault. Those gold eyes regard her once more and for the first time she sees an emotion flicker through them, quick to disappear, but it had been there nonetheless.  _ Anger.  _

A reason immediately comes to mind, but will never form into words.  _ I would rather not die next to a stranger. _

 

* * *

 

It happens at the Temple.

It is a small thing easily lost in the clamor of a hard won victory, but Cassandra will remember it even years after the fact. When the pride demon steps from the rift she can hear Leliana shouting orders at the archers, the frenzied hack and slash as they attempt to bring the behemoth down. 

The Qunari is hard at work trying to disrupt the rift per Solas’ instructions as smaller demons pour through the tear and Cassandra cuts through them, the blade warm and singing in her hand. A dance of familiarity and she is forever relieved to know the steps, the dodge and parry, body bending supple as a blade of grass. Through the fray she hears the larger demon behind her and the smell of ozone as if heralding a lightning strike.

A large shadow covers her then and it is  _ him _ , face a grim mask as a strip of lightning flashes across his back and wraps around his outstretched hand. For a moment they are so close that she can smell sweat, blood, and cinder and in the next it is gone as he drives his sword through the creature with an angry scream. The Fade wound on his hand glows a brilliant green, a string of light like an umbilical cord snapped between himself and the rift and moments later it’s done.

  
He sinks to his knees like a supplicant then, head hung and skin scorched. She is close enough to hear him just before he loses consciousness a second time, his name tossed carelessly at her feet. _Khalon Adaar,_ she thinks as they bring his too-still body down the mountain slope. _There is a wound on your body that now bears my name_ _._


	2. Working On Empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How can anyone in a war be right if there's no one left?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Semi-graphic depiction of wounds in the chapter below.
> 
> There's been quite a bit of discussion as to the lack of children that appear in Dragon Age: Inquisition and because I've often wondered it myself I decided to include them in the team's expedition into the Hinterlands. I wrote this chapter and immediately hated myself, but here we are.

She watches as he wanders into the dying light that trails through the Hinterlands, retreating from the camp under the guise of gathering firewood. Her eyes remain on his back until the lengthening shadows swallow his dark frame into the woods. 

“Don’t worry, Seeker.” Varric’s voice comes from behind her, blunt fingertips scrubbing blood from his beloved crossbow. “He’s not going to run away, that’s not who he is.”

Irritation swells, a familiar feeling whenever the storyteller opens his mouth. “Did I say I thought he was going to leave?” Fixing her companion with an icy stare she makes it a point to not look in the direction that Khalon had traveled. “And how do  _ you  _ know who he is? He is not exactly...forthcoming.”

He does not immediately answer and for a brief moment she is triumphant--none of them really know the Herald. In Haven he keeps to himself for the most part, even when there is a discussion at the war table his comments are limited. Khalon Adaar only seems to speak when he really has something to say and she appreciates and loathes that quality in equal measure.

“I’m a writer, remember?” A wry smile burrows into the corners of his mouth. “There’s some things I just know. Give him some time, today was a shitty day.”

“Of all the things you know, it is a tragedy that how to hold your tongue is not among them.” Dimly aware of his guffaw as she stokes the fire Cassandra finds herself silently agreeing with Varric.

_ Those poor children. _

* * *

 

There is an underlying chill in the air when they awake, scouts and birds pour in and out. So many letters and none of the news they bring bears good tidings and how could they? Fereldan had been embroiled in the Mage-Templar war since 9:37 and the fighting was only getting worse. How many people had they passed on the way here with nothing but a pack and memories of a home that was now destroyed?

So many hands reaching out for help, so many bodies littered across the trails. Cassandra finds herself watching Khalon carefully, often wondering what the taciturn Qunari thought of all this. Varric is noticeably discomfited by the carnage, even as they plea for peace while Templars raise their swords and mages grip their staffs. Small villages where its people had once been able to eke out a living were now no more than smoking ruins for scavengers to pick through.

When they stumble upon another village under siege they fall into position, Cassandra and the Herald pushing out ahead as Solas and Varric take higher ground. Through the clamor a woman in bloodstained clothes begins to scream, unable to formulate the words to her horror. It became obvious soon enough, a soot-streaked face at a window and the muffled keening of a child. 

The roof was alight and dangerously unstable. Khalon veers off course, leaving Cassandra to dispatch as he jams his shoulder against the door and pushes. Before she can call out a warning he’s gone into the smoke and flame and for a horrifying moment it does not appear as though he might return.

As the building collapses a dark figure exits, two small bundles in his arms. Laying them out on the ground he rears back and when she looks, oh how her heart shatters. One of the children is already dead, dried tear tracks retelling his last moments spent in fear and the other? She will not be far behind. Burned so badly most of her face is nigh unrecognizable and as he lays her on the ground she realizes the strange charred strips that cling to his arms are the girl’s own skin.

A lump is forming in her throat and she turns away as the Herald leans closer to the little girl and mutters something into her ear. Solas nears them, supporting the weight of the woman who’d alerted them earlier and Cassandra silently wills him to steer the woman away. No one should have to see their children so horrifically taken. The woman screams again, dropping between the two bundles as her grief fills the air.

Varric wretches into the bushes, Bianca clutched white-knuckled in his hands.

Inquisition soldiers frogmarch struggling captives, thrusting them to their knees before the Herald, silently demanding his judgment. He is so utterly still for a moment, a shadow pinned to the battlefield with no escape. She is about to speak when his hands snake out, violently lifting both men to their feet by the backs of their necks as he forces them toward the children.

“Look at them.” His voice is all but a menacing whisper as the two men snivel and quietly plead for clemency. “LOOK AT THEM!” 

Everyone is silent then, Solas’ hand on the grieving mother’s shoulder as her other child passes. No one would remember the two dead children in the Hinterlands but them and Cassandra would certainly never forget the sound his axe made as he cleaved the heads of both men from their shoulders.

Two too-small graves are dug beneath a tangle of crystal grace. Khalon holds the woman’s hand as they escort her to the village at the crossroads, remanding her into Mother Giselle’s care.

No one speaks as they make their way back to camp.

* * *

 

The night is full upon them when Cassandra sets out to find him.

Far away from the lights of cities the stars shine brilliantly here, the sky is beautiful even with the strange green wound thrust into the center of it, a reminder of why they fought. Moving quietly, hazel eyes picking up the trail he had not bothered to cover up in his haste to get away.

She eventually comes upon him kneeling in a stream, viciously scrubbing at his arms and hands. The broad expanse of his bare back shielding her from his gaze as she approaches slowly, cold water creeping into her boots. 

If he hears her he doesn’t acknowledge her, feverish ministrations continuing until a hesitant hand settles on his shoulder. “Lord Adaar…”

“I can’t get her skin off of me, it’s still there, I can  _ feel  _ it.”

“Lord Adaar,” she tries again, mouth suddenly dry. “Are you…”

_ He is not _ . She know that no matter what word she chooses at that moment he will not be any of them. His skin is hot beneath her hand and when he looks up at her, one of the gilded horns she’d found rather off-putting at first grazes her arm.

Bending down her hand comes to lock around his elbow, half-guiding and half-hauling him to his feet. As they reach the rocky shore he sinks down against the stones and she finds herself descending with him, listening to the water run and the night creatures singing into the dark.

“I failed them.” His voice is low and tight, as if sorrow were constricting his lungs. She wants to tell him that she knows that pain, has felt it so often and so vividly.

“One of my sisters died the same way when our caravan was attacked only…” There is a tremor in his voice now and although she wishes beyond measure that she could look away from him she doesn’t. “They strung her up first. My parents were bartering a few miles away. They killed her and as she died she was calling out for me while I hid. A coward. Her life didn’t matter any more to them than those children’s lives mattered to those men.”

He sucks in a shaky breath, eyes downcast. “I do not want the Inquisition to be blind to the lives of those struggling beyond Haven. Their lives matter, all of them.”

The Herald of Andraste needed to be a fixed point in their dizzyingly violent universe, needed to be levelheaded and strong. An unstoppable force that could defy nature’s law and move the mountain that could not be moved. The people need Khalon Adaar to be that person, and he would be, just not tonight. Numb with horror, sick with dread, she had always been curious to know more about this strange man others referred to as a beast.  _ But not like this, Maker, not like this. _

  
A calloused hand rests on his own, staring up at the stars as she pretends not to notice the way his shoulders heave as he weeps.


	3. A Safe Haven

They do not talk about the fire or the night Cassandra found him beside the river.

Later when nostalgia was upon them it would seem as though they had spent a century in the Hinterlands--putting out fires, tending the wounded, sealing those damnable rifts and putting an end to the Mage-Templar war. Securing Horsemaster Dennet was a small victory in the grander scheme of it all, by the time they had made it to his stables blood-soaked and road weary he’d set them to a few more tasks.

Khalon grew quieter still, sifting through scrolls of requisitions and reports. The vellum seemingly a small scrap held between his large hands as Scout Harding lingered in the background making small talk with Varric.

“We will quit this place,” glancing up to the expectant crowd. “And return to Haven for a brief reprieve. A company of soldiers will remain behind to ensure our hard work does not fall to pieces in our absence.”

* * *

 Cassandra spends most of the ride back at the rear of their little party, listening to fragments of conversation between Varric and Solas while watching the horns of their Herald sway in time to the steps of his mount. _A beast of considerable size for a man of considerable size._ Is that not what Master Dennet had said? Khalon turns his head then, glancing over his shoulder and briefly meeting her gaze--one that she would break, suddenly sheepish for her staring.

For a moment she chides herself, still attempting to make peace with the idea that this man was chosen by the Maker, by Andraste. It is also in that moment that Khalon slows the pace of his horse until he matches the pace of Cassandra's own steed her name comes from his mouth once, twice before she finally hears it and snaps back to attention. 

"W-What? I'm sorry, I was..."

"Thinking?" He supplies helpfully, a small smile forming on his mouth.

" _Yes,_ " she nods curtly. 

He falls silent for a moment, aware of the irritation he had caused her. "It is hard not to these days, with all that has happened. With all that will happen."

This is perhaps the longest conversation they've held in nearly a week, and she cannot help but wonder why it is that he is finally breaking his silence. This time she meets his gaze with defiant set to her jaw--it is a dare to herself not to look away again lest he come to the conclusion she fears him and Cassandra Pentaghast was  **not** a woman ruled by fear.

"We cannot foresee all that will arise, Herald, but we are building something that will grow strong. When the time comes, we will not fail."

"How do you know, Cassandra? How can you be so sure?" There is a spark of anger in his voice, of a desperation. He wants to believe her so badly, and she can see it in his eyes, but he is not there yet--still mired in all the present horrors.

"I have faith."

* * *

 Haven has grown since last they left it, a swarm of new faces greet them as they pass through the doors. Solas melts away from the group almost immediately; noiseless save for the farewell that Varric throws in his direction, nonplussed when he receives no response. Cassandra sees a group massed in front of the Chantry and her expression darkens, a hand falling to Khalon's forearm to net the entirety of his attention before gesturing to the scene unfolding with Cullen at its center.

"I'll see to it, go get some rest."

He strides ahead of her and into the crowd and she cannot help the amusement that wells at the sight of so many scattering as he moves through their ranks to the heart of the disagreement.

Later as the afternoon sun begins to dip they stand around the war table, debating support and the next course of action. It is clear that there is still work to do in the Hinterlands, but a trip to Val Royeaux seems to be in order--even if Leliana has her reservations which she makes known in short order.

"Listen," Khalon's voice was quiet in comparison to theirs, but they all heard him and briefly the arguments cease. "We know what is at stake, even if this does not work at least the effort was made."

His eyes find all of their faces, finally resting on hers. "We'll get this done and see it through, as Cassandra said. I have faith."

She allows a ghost of a smile to creep over her face before it ebbs, acknowledging his words with a quick bob of her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a terribad person for taking so long to update this, but I promised myself I would put work into this again. Honestly, this is a bit of a filler chapter and it is pretty terrible, but I'm hoping to get back into the rhythm again. The first three chapters were from Cassandra's point of view for the most part so the next three will more than likely be from Khalon's.


End file.
